


Past, Present and Finally A Future

by Akinasky



Series: Sterek Bingo 2018 [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha and Emmisary, Beta Derek, F/M, FBI Intern Stiles Stilinski, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, M/M, Magical Tattoos, Minor Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski, Pre-Relationship, sbhello, sbmagicwrong, sbtattoos, sterek is endgame, sterekbingo2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 09:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14517138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akinasky/pseuds/Akinasky
Summary: Stiles Stilinski is living the dream after highschool, got the job, got the girl and everything is perfect. So why does he feel so alone? Maybe a tattoo will help. Too bad he never saw this coming.Or Stiles magically binds himself accidentally to Derek with a tattoo.





	Past, Present and Finally A Future

** Past Present and Finally A Future **

**Sterek Bingo – Tattoos**

 

Stiles Stilinski was in the FBI training program in Quantico, he had a future and supposedly he was dating the girl he’d been obsessed with since third grade, his dad was safe at home playing the part of ‘Proud Papa’. His best friend was going to veterinarian school and he’s enjoying the mediocre life of an assistant coach for now. Stiles was ‘living his dream’ and yet he was standing in a tattoo parlor, clutching the small picture in his hand and throwing a chunk of his food money into this ‘rite of passage’. One that he’d been set against when Scott decided to do it years ago, mostly because the tattoo was stupid but also because tattoos are permanent and he wasn’t really the permanent kind of person.

“The down payment is sixty, I need your ID and the picture,” the artist said and Stiles pulled the cash from his wallet and his ID. He handed over the drawing, flattening it reverently and looked at the man.

“You know where you want it?” the artist asked, Stiles should really try and remember the guy’s name if he was going to be poking him with needles in a few minutes. The only thing he could really see on the ocean of tattoos on the guy’s skin were skulls, words and something about Star Wars.

Stiles pointed to the place where he wanted the tattoo and the man nodded, made some notes on the sheet. He turned to the other woman, “Okay, finish with the paperwork and I’ll get ready. Is this it then? Exactly like this?” the artist asked, holding up the drawing.

“I mean, cleaner lines and so on,” Stiles said with a shrug, he’d copied it down from another picture he had back at the dorm but didn’t like the idea of bringing the picture here. Despite being the King of Google, it was important that it had come from _that_ picture, like somehow it would bring them closer together. Mostly Stiles was being a weirdo about this and there was no excuse.

The artist nodded and headed back to his room while Stiles put his initials on several pieces of paper a couple hundred times and sat down to wait. Thinking about the tattoo when Scott had to burn those two bands into his arm. Stiles still rolled his eyes every time he saw it because it was just stupid but maybe he’d spoken to soon.

This seemed to be the only thing he wanted to do, Stiles didn’t care about the FBI or Lydia, especially since she was in another part of the country barely calling or texting him even after everything calmed down back home. He didn’t want to feel numb anymore and after going home, this was the only action that seemed to make any sense.

So, he waited for the tattoo guy to call his name.

 

Derek was visiting his sister in New Mexico when he first felt it. The sensation of fluttering feelings just at the back of his mind. Derek didn’t know what it was or where it was coming, thankfully it didn’t last.

Then it happened again, the flutter of anger when he was calm and laughing, talking with Cora about her newest obsession with a beta in her pack. He stopped and pressed a hand into his chest and tried to understand why he was so suddenly angry.

“Derek? You okay?” Cora asked.

“I don’t know,” he coughed, trying to clear his throat, “I just felt angry all of a sudden, like a phantom limb or something.”

“Happened before?” Cora asked as she munched on some chips.

“Maybe?” he asked hesitantly.

“That’s helpful Derek,” Cora snarled and he rolled his eyes, trying to shake it off. It was nothing, just something weird going on. It was nothing.

Then the dreams started.

The first time he found himself in Stiles’s dorm room, knowing exactly where everything was even though he’d never been there. The FBI still was more than interested in him, hoping that they could find a reason for him to be arrested so he hadn’t been able to call or visit like he’d been hoping to. Stiles was always the spastic human that got under his skin and stayed there and after all these years, Derek didn’t even question the desire to check on him anymore, just figured it was there to stay.

Derek frowned as he watched Stiles move around the room, gathering his books and a coffee mug and then he paused. Stiles winced and patted his chest, it wasn’t something Derek had ever seen him do before and it almost looked painful but not at the same time. In fact, Stiles looked relieved after the taps.

“I’m not alone,” Stiles whispered, Derek eyes widened and wondered if Stiles could somehow feel his presence there even though this was a dream and he wasn’t there at all. But Stiles didn’t turn at look at Derek and then he was gone and Derek woke up wondering what the hell was going on.

The phantom feelings were off and on throughout the day, angry and pain, sadness and little sparks of happiness or enthusiasm. Derek didn’t link them to the dreams that continued about Stiles until about three weeks after they started when he dreamt of Stiles drinking alone in his dorm, then he punched the wall and Derek felt the echo of pain and anger, snapping up in bed and pressing a hand to his head.

“Stiles?” he asked the empty room.

 

“Stiles, you want to tell me what the hell was with the drunk calling me the other night and then breaking up with me?” Lydia demanded on the phone.

Stiles sighed, “Look Lydia, you are one of my top three favorite people in the whole world but you’re not here and I’m not there. Are you really telling me that this is what you want when you are off at college? Are you really going to feed me some bullshit that after everything that happened, we were ever going to fit together the way we wanted to all those years ago. Well the way I imagined anyway.”

“Stiles, I love you.”

He slumped down on the edge of the bed and curled up on his side, “Lyds, I love you too.”

“But?” she asked, her voice gentling in his ear.

“But getting together just feels so wrong now. I need my friend Lydia, your one of my best bros and I don’t want to lose that because we tried to make some long-distance shit work which inevitably leads to cheating and betrayal.”

“Site your source?” Lydia asked and Stiles could hear the smirk in her tone.

“Cosmo,” Stiles responded and they both chuckled. He sobered, “I’m really sorry about the drunk dialing break up. I was a coward and a jackass and I do love you. I didn’t think I was brave enough to just tell you how I felt.”

“But not like that?” Lydia asked though it didn’t sound like a question.

“Yeah, not these days. You are always going to be my Strawberry-Blonde Goddess. I miss you.”

“Miss you too Stiles,” she paused and Stiles was about to interject with a smooth goodbye when Lydia spoke again, “Is this about Derek?”

“What?” he exclaimed, “No! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Lydia scoffed, “Don’t play stupid with me Stiles, you and I were supposedly fine until you saved Derek and came back to Beacon Hills. Just don’t wait forever and miss out on the chance okay?”

“Yeah okay, I will just ask Derek ‘ _Hey Sourwolf, I got a thing for you, any chance you like dick_ ’?”

Lydia snickered, “Well probably not like that but yeah. He cares about you, Stiles, its obvious. If there is never going to be anything there for you then maybe finding out now will give some other poor boy or girl a chance with you in the future. Hopefully not one that looks exactly like the leather wearing, brooding werewolf of our wayward youth.”

Stiles rolled his eyes, “That requires a level of courage that I just don’t really have. Ya know?”

“Don’t be an idiot Stiles,” Lydia said and hung up on him.

Stiles chuckled and laid back to think about what she said.

Nothing much changed in the days that followed, he actually talked to Lydia more in the weeks after they broke up then they had in the months before which Stiles felt more than a little shitty about. Relationships were two sided and he hadn’t called her just as much as she hadn’t called him. Stiles went to class, ran into walls with his amazing klutziness and went out drinking a couple of times with some guys from the dorm.

Stiles spent some of his evenings imagining a conversation with Derek, telling the werewolf how he felt about him and that he’d wanted him for a very long time. Derek was the reason a very young Stiles Stilinski had figured out he was bisexual after all. On the good nights when he imagined that Derek felt something in return he would jerk off, thinking of all the sexytimes that would be coming soon after. On the rough nights when Stiles was sure that Derek would just punch him in the face, he talked himself out of ever saying anything to Derek about his feelings. People survived unrequited love/lust all the time. It wouldn’t be the death of him though telling Derek may well cause his death so it was just better to say nothing at all.

The good nights, he didn’t call Derek even though he had the number and on the bad nights, it was easy never clicking on that little phone. He went to class, did his homework, went to training and took care of the new tattoo that no one even knew about but him and the tattoo artist in the shop whose named turned out was Logan.

Stiles left his final class on Friday afternoon, walking out of the building with a couple of his classmates, “You guys got any plans for the weekend?”

“Nothing to exciting, what about you?”

Stiles opened his mouth to speak but someone spoke, “Stiles?” he called and Stiles froze and looked up and across the parking lot in front of the building to see Derek. Or maybe it was Derek, he didn’t have that well known glower anymore, though his eyebrows seemed to be judging Stiles from several yards off. Derek wasn’t wearing his leather jacket, dressed casually in dark jeans and a sweater with thumb holes and it made him look soft and approachable, something that Derek Hale had never been. It was enough of the old Derek that Stiles felt the rising beat of his heart, knowing that Derek would hear it too.

Stiles moved across the space between them quickly and demanded, “What are you doing here man?”

Derek looked around at the other people who were standing with Stiles staring at him with rapt interest about this handsome unknown friend from the past. Stiles watched as the werewolf tucked his hands into his jean pockets and waited a minute then said, “I need to talk to you about something.”

Stiles frowned but nodded, “We can go to a nearby coffee place? See you guys later.”

With that his friends waved and walked away but most of them were staring blatantly at Derek who was still looking at Stiles.

“Can we go to your dorm room?” Derek asked.

Stiles thought about what he’d been doing that morning while thinking about Derek and winced, “There’s not a lot of room, nowhere to sit. You don’t want to get some coffee then?”

“I don’t drink coffee and it’s too public. Is there somewhere else we could go then?”

Stiles thought about the dorms and wondered where the hell he could go with Derek and what the hell did he want to talk about anyway? Was there anything they really needed privacy to talk about? Well besides the werewolf stuff anyway. But there is no reason that Derek would come here for that. It wasn’t like they needed protected phone lines and encrypted emails to discuss such things, even if Stiles was in the FBI training program.

Stiles leaned forward, “Is someone dead? Am I dead?”

Derek frowned, his eyebrows judging him wildly, “No, you idiot. Can we just go somewhere? Please?”

Stiles flopped his hands around and led Derek in the direction of the dorm rooms. He didn’t have anywhere else he could go. They walked in silence, Derek was normally monosyllabic and Stiles didn’t know what to say and small talk with Derek had never gone well. What was he supposed to say? _‘So, anyone try to kill you lately?’_ Didn’t seem to be a great place to start.

Stiles led Derek into his room and cleaned up the clothes that were spread out on his bed. Derek waited patiently and despite Stiles glancing back at him there wasn’t any notes of disgust on the werewolf’s face so hopefully that meant it didn’t smell to badly in here.

“You can sit on the bed?” Stiles asked, then leaned against his desk. He had a chair but Stiles was already nervous enough. He didn’t need to make it worse by attempting to sit still. Derek took him up on the offer and settled on the bed, folding his hands together between his knees and looked at the floor.

“Have you noticed anything weird lately?” Derek started.

Stiles frowned, “No, I moved away from Beacon Hills so there would be less ‘weird things’ and so far, it’s been a rousing success. Why do you ask? What are you doing here Derek?”

His hands fell open as he shrugged, like his whole body was saying how much he didn’t know what was going on and Stiles shuffled against the wall as Derek took a deep breath and started, then stopped then started again, “I don’t know if you’ve felt anything weird that you couldn’t explain but for weeks now, I’ve been feeling emotions that don’t belong to me, I dreamt about this room way before today and I need to know what’s happening.”

Stiles frown deepened, “I don’t understand.”

Derek looked up for a second then back down again, “About two weeks ago, late in the evening you punched something with your right hand.”

Stiles squeezed his right hand, feeling the phantom ache from punching the wall. He shook his head.

“Same night you must have been drinking because I had a headache, the kind I only ever had when I get wolfsbane poisoning and get battered a bit. I don’t like it, I need it to stop.”

“What to stop?” Stiles stammered, not understanding what this was.

Derek stood up, “I can feel what you feel. Like a bond of some kind, like I would have sometimes with my family but its stronger with you and I don’t know why. I don’t know why it’s happening and I’m here to find out. It needs to stop. I can’t—I don’t think I can have someone else in my head like that! Not again!”

Stiles stared slack jawed, thinking of all the times he’d jerked off to the idea of Derek Hale in his bed. This was not one of the scenarios he’d imagined. This wasn’t anywhere on the list. He shook off the feelings of dread and tried to shut it all down, “Do you know when it started? It wasn’t happening after Beacon Hills was it?”

Derek shook his head, “No, it started about four to five weeks ago. I didn’t know if it was for real at first, then I started dreaming of you but I think I was actually seeing you here in your room.”

“You were seeing me?” Stiles choked out, “What the fuck have you been seeing?”

Derek looked up in and waved his hands in front of him, “Nothing like that. Not yet. I’m just saying maybe we should figure it out before I see _that_!”

Stiles nodded and thought back to three weeks ago and rubbed the place over his heart where his new tattoo was and wondered.

Derek watched him, “What?”

Stiles turned away, moving over to slump into the chair and looked at the werewolf, “You have to not laugh at me!” he commanded.

“I don’t think anything about this is funny Stiles, you’re in my head making me feel what you’re feeling!”

Stiles snarled, “I’m not _making you feel_ anything Stubbornwolf!”

Derek growled back then rubbed the back of his neck in a very Stiles-esque fashion and Stiles softened. Derek was someone who always struggled to know himself after what happened to his family and his pack – more than once.

“Okay, sorry, when I first got here everything was great and I loved it. Then I went back to Beacon Hills, after everything that happened it was like I felt nothing anymore. I didn’t feel like Stiles anymore; my dad was thrilled and I was dating Lydia Martin and I felt _nothing_! I just wanted something to make sense so I got a tattoo. It was the only thing that felt right at the time and that’s about the time you started feeling my emotions.”

Stiles unbuttoned his plaid over shirt and pushed it off to the side and pulled down the neck of his IronMan shirt to show Derek the tattoo that stood in stark relief against his pale dotted skin. The triskelion didn’t have clean lines like Derek’s did, it was more blurred around the edges, almost childlike in form. It was like he knew he belonged to Derek and his pack but Stiles didn’t know if it was real so it was choppy around the edges. Which is exactly how Stiles felt when he did it.

It’s how he felt now. Only now it was worse because Derek wouldn’t be able to accept it.

“Why my symbol?” Derek asked quietly, as if he didn’t pull in enough air to make it loud or aggressive or grouchy like he usually sounded.

“Because in the end,” Stiles started before he could think to much about it, “I belong to the Hale pack, your pack. I love Scott, he’s my brother but it was always different with you. I trusted you, I was desperate to keep you alive after I pulled my teenage head out of my ass, even if it meant you left town and never returned.”

Derek swallowed and stared at Stiles, “Symbols and magic. Something happened when you tattooed yourself with my mark. We need someone who understands it. I don’t understand how you could have been connected to me when I’m not an alpha anymore.”

Stiles looked at him in surprise, “You felt this with your betas?”

“Not like this, sometimes I felt something in the back of my mind like a homing beacon that also told me when they were in trouble, until Scott called my leadership into question and his interference and my stupidity started to sever the bonds. If I’d had time before they died, it could have been like that again. Maybe it was better that it never happened, I already felt the losses like limbs I would never grow back.”

Stiles leaned forward and held his hand out like he was going to touch Derek’s wrist but faltered, just because he magically bound them together with a tattoo didn’t mean that he had any right to touch Derek, even in comfort. Not after what he did, even inadvertently. Stiles hand flopped back down to his lap and he shifted enough that the pulled edge of his shirt would slide back completely into place.

“I get it, we need to fix this so you can get back to life as normal. I didn’t mean to bring you here with this, I’m sorry.”

Derek looked up at him, frowning and tilted his head to the side in confusion, “You didn’t do it on purpose did you?”

“No, of course not, I didn’t know I did anything besides mar my beautiful flesh with a tattoo.”

Derek snorted with that little smile he did sometimes, “Then you have nothing to apologize for.”

Stiles nodded and gave him a sloppy salute. “I guess we could start with Deaton, see what he has to say. I don’t really know anyone else who has any sort of knowledge about magic and symbols and stuff. Though he’s going to be a cryptic tool about it. You know it to be true.”

Derek nodded but pulled out his phone anyway. He dialed a number from memory because Derek is a dinosaur who clearly doesn’t know how to put contacts in his phone, Stiles thought rolling his eyes.

Deaton picked up on the second ring which Stiles could hear because Derek had it on speakerphone, “Derek?” Clearly Deaton had Derek’s contact information too.

“Alan, I have Stiles here and we have a bit of a situation.”

“Hello Stiles,” Deaton started.

“Mr. Deaton,” Stiles returned with a wave that the veterinarian would be able to see.

“Situation?”

Derek waved the phone at Stiles, who took a deep breath and started, “I got a tattoo.”

“Uh huh?” Deaton questioned, sounding flummoxed for once and Stiles took a little too much pride in that for a few seconds. Derek gestured wildly with the phone again.

“It’s Derek’s pack symbol, the triskelion and now apparently he can feel my emotions and actually see me sometimes. What gives?”

Deaton was silent for a minute but he must have been doing or saying something that Derek could hear because the werewolf’s frown as deepening as he glared at the phone.

“What?” Stiles demanded.

“Deaton thinks that the bond came from each of our needs for the other. I need a pack mate and you need a pack.”

“Well we want it to go away man, make it happen,” Stiles insisted mostly because he could tell that Derek wanted it to be gone. Stiles sort of liked the idea that he was connected to Derek but that was just his unrequited crush gone wild. It wasn’t like the bond went both ways and Stiles had technically done it to Derek without permission and the dude was more than fairly obsessed with consent and things like that. Not to mention his bad history with magic on top of it. Kate turning him back into teen Derek to control him and they had all wondered if Jennifer had done something to him.

“Mr. Stilinski, I can’t make something happen without a lot of work and your power to do it.”

Stiles snorted, “What power?”

“I told you a long time ago Stiles that you are more than human, you carry a spark of power. I told you after that time with the Mountain Ash, that you shouldn’t have been able to make the line out of nothing. Something in you connected to Derek in an emotionally charged moment and a bond was born. I can’t just magically make it go away.”

“It magically happened so why the hell not?” Stiles snapped. “Look, Derek doesn’t want it, I don’t want it so go away bond! If there are words than teach me but he needs it to go away.”

Derek tilted his head and looked down at Stiles’s chest before he said, “You’re lying.”

Stiles frowned, “What are you talking about. I want out of this little bond as much as you do.”

Derek’s eyebrows went up in surprise, “You don’t though, do you?”

Deaton coughed to interrupt them, “Listen you two, I need to do some researching. I will send you anything I find and we can talk again tomorrow. I think you two need to really talk about it.”

Then he hung up and Stiles rolled his eyes, “Cryptic jackass.”

Derek put his phone down and kept staring at Stiles.

Stiles turned to look at the wall, trying not to think what he smelled like to Derek, not to mention what the room might smell like. Yeah, its better to think about that then his total lack of desire to get rid of the bond because for the first time in months he didn’t feel desperately alone.

 

The need for food and finishing homework gave Stiles a chance to ignore the conversation that Derek seemed determined to have for a couple of hours but they were going to have to talk before Deaton called back. Stiles procrastinated on his reading and assignments while Derek went out to find something to eat. For both of them. Like a date but not really despite the bond.

Derek came here to get rid of it. Stiles didn’t know why he didn’t just call about it though, they could have called Deaton together. They could have done all this without the hyper embarrassment of the face to face knowledge that Derek knew things about Stiles now that he hadn’t wanted anyone to know. The tattoo was private, something to help him not feel so alone. Too bad the bond hadn’t worked the other way instead, Stiles could have lived out the rest of his life feeling a twinge of Derek at the back of his mind, and the werewolf would have been none the wiser about it but no even when Stiles wanted something enough that magic sprang from the depths to ‘give it to him’ it did it wrong.

Stiles was just going to have to get used to being alone.

His cell phone chirped with a text and Stiles looked down to see a message from Derek, _‘You feel sad, what’s wrong?’_

Stiles sighed, it figures Derek would feel that. He tapped out the response and hit send, _‘Nothing you can fix Sourwolf so don’t worry about it.’_

Derek didn’t reply and it was another fifteen minutes before Derek got back to the dorm with his arms full of take out bags so Stiles took a break and started eating, hoping a full mouth would keep the conversation from starting and would shut up all the emotions Stiles didn’t want Derek to feel.

Sadly, the silence didn’t last as long as Stiles would have liked, meaning forever.

“You don’t want to break the bond,” Derek didn’t ask a question, he made a statement so Stiles just made some noncommittal noise. “What happened with Scott and Lydia? And the rest of your pack? Why do you feel so alone and sad? Why the tattoo, you hated Scott getting a tattoo.”

Stiles shrugged and started from the top, “Scott’s been busy with his actual werewolf betas. I haven’t heard from him in a while, Lydia and I broke up a while back. We’re doing okay but she’s not here. No one is here. I don’t know if why I feel alone or sad is any business of yours and I hated Scott’s tattoo, I didn’t say I hated tattoos. I wanted something to make me feel like I belonged and after that little road trip back to Beacon Hills, I don’t know – something happened and being with you even for a short time,” Stiles shrugged. “I wasn’t alone anymore, in my mind anyway. I didn’t know what to say to actual you so I got a tattoo instead of talking to you about it. I had no right to your time or anything.”

Derek snorted, “Well actual me is here now so maybe we can figure it out.”

“We’ll get rid of it then it will be over.”

“You don’t want to me to be here with you, as a friend? Even when you feel so sad? Why not?”

“Derek you were pissed a couple hours ago about this, why do you even care?”

“Because I trusted you too, a long time now.”

Stiles froze, slack jawed because that wasn’t something Derek Hale said lightly, if ever. Then before Stiles could respond, Derek got up and walked out of the dorm without another word. Stiles just shook his head and tried to go back to his homework.

Since there was no way Stiles could trust Deaton to give him all the information, Stiles went searching for magical tattoos, there was a couple of relics and works about it, also the internet was full of crap about bonds and bonding marks but none on them made any sense and they were mostly the plot point of poorly written soul mate stories.

And he started drinking energy drinks like they were going out of style. His feelings while he was studying or researching, that wasn’t an issue because the one thing that energy drinks did for him was make him hyper focused. He wasn’t going to get emotional about this but when he slept, that was a different fish. Stiles couldn’t control his dreams, he couldn’t control the thoughts and the feelings when he dreamt of Derek, thinking of the extremely beautiful body he held up in the pool or the time when he was willing to cut off Derek’s arm to save his life. Stiles didn’t think those should be sexy things to most people, even to himself but when he thought about the trust that Derek placed in him—Stiles found that sexy.

So, he was going to keep from sleeping, he wasn’t going to force his emotions onto Derek but he didn’t know another way.

Stiles ran out of energy drinks around the same time that he ran out of literature that he could read in his room, he packed up his bag with his laptop and everything before he headed out of the store for some more drinks and headed for the campus library.

It wasn’t until he was arriving at the front door that he realized it was well after two in the morning, thankfully it was open so he went inside and set up shop. He looked for books that maybe he hadn’t seen yet, something about what was happening then started researching the occult and Alan Deaton, maybe there was someone else that he could talk to about this.

The clock was flipping over to five in the morning when Derek texted, _‘Why aren’t you sleeping? I can feel your heartrate in my head. Pounding.’_

Stiles could feel it too, like an echo in the background until someone pointed it out. Now it was all he felt. Stiles shook his head and put his phone back in his pocket, he was doing this for Derek. If Derek could feel his heart though, then he was getting the emotions out of there.

The phone buzzed again and Stiles lifted it to read the message, _‘Don’t kill yourself to fix this Stiles. It’s not worth it.’_

 _‘It’s not going to kill me, I’m fine,’_ Stiles responded in a quick tap-tap of his thumbs.

Stiles kept researching until he had to leave for his class, went to class then headed back to the library. He couldn’t help the little stumble in his gait from the adrenaline crash and leaned against the door just as someone grabbed him and pulled him away from the library entrance.

“What are you doing?” Derek hissed in his ear and Stiles shrugged.

“I’m making sure you can be free, like you wanted,” he slurred a little.

“You’re an idiot!” Derek snarled and pressed Stiles’s face into the side of his neck.

“You’re an emotionally constipated Sourwolf,” he snarked back. His words were muffled into Derek’s neck. “Look, this is already embarrassing enough without you knowing the rest.”

“What if I know the rest already?” Derek whispered as he turned them around and headed away from the library. Stiles was to tired to argue, all he wanted to was to lay down and sleep. Caffeine crashes were shit to deal with, something he hadn’t really experienced for a while.

They made it back to Stiles’s room and he was laid out on the bed by the time Stiles was cognizant again. He jerked upright and looked around, seeing Derek sitting on his desk chair and looking at his laptop.

“Invasion of privacy much?”

Derek shrugged, “I’ll show you mine?”

“Like you would ever have something as modern as a search history,” Stiles snorted but Derek just pulled his cell phone, did something with the screen then tossed it onto the bed next to Stiles’s leg. It sat there for a couple of seconds, a gift and a tease. Stiles needed into this man’s mind more than he’d ever needed anything so he picked it up and looked at the screen. The background picture was shocking enough for him at first, it was a blurry shot of Stiles and his dad hugging each other and it wasn’t as recent as Stiles would have guessed. Stiles looked over at Derek but he wasn’t looking up, Derek was still tapping at the computer.

Stiles looked back to the phone and started looking at the search history, finding nothing of any real note. They had been looking at some of the same things but Derek seemed to have insight into the community that Stiles could never hope for. He was a born wolf after all so it wasn’t that surprising that he’d been able to skip a lot of the unhelpful information and stories that had taken up so much of Stiles’s evening. When he was done there, Stiles peaked up to see Derek was still messing with his computer so he went to the texting log and looked at Derek in surprise, “You’ve been texting with my dad?”

Derek nodded, “You weren’t doing well, I needed to know how to help you.”

“But it wasn’t just today, there are messages here since before we went back to Beacon Hills.”

Derek looked at him, “What would you have me say Stiles? He called me about cases, I asked him about everyone back home. He may not have been my biggest fan back before I left, with good reason but I have to longest history with the supernatural, sometimes he had questions. Sometimes I wanted to know how everyone was doing.”

“Did you talk to him while I was gone?” Stiles asked quietly, kind of hoping Derek wasn’t a werewolf so he wouldn’t hear the question.

“Yes, when I asked about you he didn’t know what I was talking about, thought that I had met your grandfather or something, apparently he was known as Stiles as well. When he got confused and angry, some woman took the phone and hung up on me. Was that the shade of your mother?”

Stiles nodded, “You didn’t forget about me?”

“No, I don’t think so. I kind of got spacey for a little while but that was right around the time the FBI started chasing six-year-old leads so I wasn’t able to call back again. But I worried about you, I didn’t know why your father didn’t know you.”

Stiles choked on the tears, the heaviness in his throat where he couldn’t swallow and stared at Derek who stared right back. “Why didn’t you come back, tell them who I was?”

“I think those things tried to make me forget too, like I said things got a little fuzzy. Like they could make me forget to care and call but they couldn’t actually make me forget you.”

“You didn’t forget me?” Stiles whispered and dropped the phone on the bed, curling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms loosely around them. He pressed his forehead to his knees and sniffled. The mark over his heart pounded in the rhythm of his pulse and he hissed as the pain spread through his chest.

“Stiles?” Derek called out.

He shouted, shoving back into the bed as the triskelion tattoo started to burn, worse than it had been when he’d been tattooed. Derek sat down beside him and pressed a hand to the side of Stiles’s neck, seeping at the never-ending pain barely making a dent.

“Stiles, what’s happening?”

The smell of burning clothes filled the room while the mark scorched the shirt off of his chest. Stiles looked down to see the triskelion was ember red and sizzling but after a couple more minutes of groaning, the pain faded but the heat did not. Stiles breathed heavily and whispered, “Derek, what’s happening?”

“I think it’s the bond, Deaton was right. You bound yourself to me but it’s one sided and it was never meant to be that way. Something this strong, its blood magic. You sacrificed your skin and blood to make this bond but Deaton says it can’t stay one sided.”

“You talked to Deaton without me?” Stiles hissed then arched in pain. Derek pressed a hand to his chest and gently levered him back flat onto the bed.

“You were still sleeping off the caffeine binge and Deaton didn’t have much more to give. We can make it two sided, I know its not what you were hoping.”

“No,” Stiles said shaking his head and hissing as the pain spiked again, “I didn’t want to force this. I would rather have it hurt then to feel you were forced into this.”

“This is how an Emissary and an Alpha bond, Stiles. They share the same mark.”

“You’re not an alpha,” Stiles gritted out, his teeth aching from the strain as his eyes watered. “You didn’t want this, you don’t want this.”

“That was when I didn’t know!” Derek snapped.

“Know what?” Stiles screeched, hating the sounds he made.

“That I need you too,” Derek responded and pressed his hand into Stiles’s red burning mark and everything went black.

 

Derek didn’t know what to think as Stiles slumped into the bed and stilled. He knew Stiles was still alive, he was breathing though it was shallow and his heart was beating but it sounded sluggish compared to the pounding of the last day while he’d been mainlining caffeine. When he came here, he’d been prepared to be angry and he had been angry when he thought Stiles had been messing with things he shouldn’t have been, but when he felt the pain and loneliness it wasn’t so easy to be angry anymore.

Loneliness was something he was very familiar with, the last couple of years notwithstanding. Derek had spent so much time on his own, even when he was with Laura and later when he was with the pack or Cora. Having Stiles in his head and then learning it wasn’t because of some selfish desire to make Derek insane, it hadn’t seemed to much of a problem. Then when Stiles’s emotions turned off and his physical drain had ratcheted up, he wondered more than once how Stiles had lived this long without someone watching out for him.

When Deaton had called, he’d been calling with ‘bad news’, _“It can’t be undone without harming you both and its going crazy right now because all the pressure is coming from Stiles and going into you. It should be an even road, going both ways. It’s the best way for an Alpha and an Emissary to help and support each other.”_

Derek had replied in confusion, _“I’m not an alpha, I don’t need an Emissary. He’s not a werewolf, he doesn’t need a pack.”_

Deaton only said, _“Everyone needs a pack Derek and the alpha thing? Today that is true, who knows of tomorrow.”_ Then hung up. Derek was left in the stillness of Stiles’s dorm room, watching him sleep and feeling him dream and wondered and wished that they could have this. They could be a little pack of two, helping to support each other and make it through the day without being alone anymore. Derek had never considered his need for Stiles because he’d always assumed that Scott and Stiles would never falter.

And then they did.

It didn’t mean that Derek was Stiles’s alpha but he knew with a shining blink of clarity that Stiles may have always stood by Scott but he’d never turned his back on Derek either. Stiles was always the one who stood up to others for him.

It was the reason Derek trusted Stiles.

Derek moved to sit next to the human on the bed and looked down at the triskelion tattoo. It wasn’t raging hot anymore, it wasn’t red like fire embers. It looked exactly the same as when Stiles showed it to him the day before and he wouldn’t know if it worked until Stiles woke up but the hammering in the back of his skull wasn’t as jarring anymore and Stiles wasn’t in pain so he figures they were doing better than before.

Derek leaned back against the wall at Stiles’s feet and dialed his sister. She answered on the second ring, “Derek?”

“Hey sis,” he responded with a smile and let his free hand rest lightly over Stiles’s ankle.

“How’s it going with Stiles?” she asked directly.

“He accidently bound us together, we’re trying to work it out.” Derek paused, “I don’t think I’m coming back for a while.”

Cora snorted, “I didn’t think you would be. Are you going to be okay, having a pack again? Having someone in the back of your mind.”

“I don’t know Cor, its hard to imagine being okay with it after feeling every single death of our family then Laura and Boyd and Erica. And Stiles is stupidly human.”

“You could find someone to give him the Bite,” Cora responded and Derek flashed back to Peter and Paige and snarled.

“No, I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know brother, it was a bad joke. Sorry.”

“You’re forgiven,” Derek said and squeezed Stiles’s ankle again, reveling in the warm skin under his palm. “I’m going to go, Stiles might wake up soon and we are going to have to figure out what’s next.”

“Keep me posted,” Cora requested in her ‘bossy’ voice and they both hung up without saying goodbye. They didn’t really do goodbyes on the phone for some reason. Derek leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, waiting to see if there was anything in Stiles’s dreams or feelings that would tell him when the human might awaken.

Derek didn’t know he was falling asleep until he was tugged into Stiles’s dream and stood waiting to see what happened.

 

**Stiles was talking to another version of Derek as they sat around a small table in a coffee place. Derek didn’t recognize it so maybe it was somewhere in the area or Stiles filled in the blanks for the dream.**

**“I am really glad you came here, I needed to talk to you about something.”**

**“Oh?” other Derek responded with an arch of his brow while he drank from a coffee house mug. Derek wondered what Stiles thought he drank because real Derek didn’t drink caffeinated beverages, it didn’t work and always ended up tasting strange.**

**Stiles willed himself to speak stumbling over rushed words, “Ireallylikeyou. Doyoubychancelikedudes?”**

**Dream Derek frowned, “What?”**

**Stiles took another deep breath, “I know you came here to get rid of the bond but I don’t really want to get rid of it because I like you. Like, I like _like_ you.”**

**Dream Derek stared in surprise, saying nothing and real Derek wanted to punch him. He wanted to shake him, so Dream Derek would tell Stiles that though he didn’t really know about this yet but he didn’t want to say no either. Real Derek was left wondering if this was really how Stiles felt.**

**“Sorry, this was stupid,” Stiles muttered and real Derek couldn’t stand it anymore. He pushed closer to the scene between the two, coming to stand next to Stiles and the Dream Derek.**

**“Say something, you idiot!” he shouted at himself.**

**Neither of them heard him, nothing around him shifted or moved with him. Derek wasn’t really here, he was an observer but he didn’t want to be. Derek didn’t want to watch these chances float on by him anymore. He flicked out his claws, set them at the back of Stiles’s neck and prepared for the zip of pleasure pain he would feel as he jammed the claws in and brought them together.**

Somewhere far off, Derek could hear Stiles whimpering from the pain. Then he was swirling even closer to Stiles, in his mind and the wavelength he always seemed to ride and it was never ending. Stiles had about ten thousand thoughts and when he was lucky enough to grab one, it never lasted long enough and as Derek swirled around in his thoughts, they all seemed to be about him.

Memories of Derek Hale. The thoughts Stiles had about him in the beginning, the feelings he had before Stiles even knew what to do with them. Derek could see them passing each other through Stiles’s eyes and his empathy, despite the desire to ‘kill Derek’ even in the beginning.

It had been about solidarity in the beginning with Scott but as time moved on, Stiles realized there was something special about Derek for him. Stiles knew there could be more if only he was brave enough and Derek wanted it too.

Derek didn’t know if he wanted it, but he wanted Stiles to stay close. Maybe they could start there.

Derek saw the countless dreams and fantasies Stiles had about telling him what he felt about Derek. He saw the wet dreams, the laughter and the tears and wondered if Stiles really understood that what his mind was offering as fantasy was the one thing that Derek wanted above all else and was very sure he would never have and despite the fact that Derek wanted it too, he couldn’t just jump into something like this.

Finally, the visuals shimmered away and they were left in the coffee shop again, this time it was empty except for Derek and Stiles. They stood looking at each other, Stiles holding a small wad of napkins over his neck as he stared curiously at Derek.

“What did you do?” Stiles demanded.

Derek took a deep breath, “I completed the bond, I don’t know if I can promise you anything but trust and to be here for you but I’m willing to start there. You don’t have to be alone anymore Stiles.”

Derek opened his eyes to Stiles’s dorm room before he could hear what Stiles had to say, looking down as Stiles sat up and looked Derek in the eye. “Neither of us have to be alone anymore.”

 

 

Derek stayed in a small apartment near the dorms and the campus, and they spent the next couple months getting used to the idea of being in each other’s minds. Deaton was right about a couple things, one the bond started going both ways Derek wasn’t getting overloaded with feelings and pain anymore. Stiles and Derek got used to being in constant contact with that slight hum in the back of their minds and became a pack of two.

It wasn’t until they went home to Beacon Hills for the holidays, landing under the mistletoe at the Stilinski-McCall celebration that Stiles and Derek shared their first kiss. And their story really began.


End file.
